


hollowed out your veins to draw him in

by pigeonsarecool



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 15:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5592259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonsarecool/pseuds/pigeonsarecool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon can show his scars to strangers, because they are the mistakes of the living. It’s what you do when you’re dead that counts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hollowed out your veins to draw him in

 

Kieren’s got color in his face that isn’t fooling anyone. In another life, Simon could have taken his hand, could have been gentle with him, could have wiped it off himself, but the thing is he doesn’t know how. He burns through Kieren Walker like he does the rest of his converts, argues with him until they’re both blue in the face and leaves him too soon, makes sure it _hurts_ , because Kieren doesn’t seem to be making any kind of progress, because Kieren wears makeup like it’s armor and his guilt isn’t really guilt at all, it’s selfish, it’s a reminder.

 

 

Simon used to powder over his own scars, _before_.

 

 

 

 

 

Simon killed his mother. Late one night, he rose from the grave, cracked open her skull and fed himself her brains, piece by bloody piece.

That’s what they tell him, and afterwards, that’s what he remembers.

 

“We all have our scars,” he told Kieren, that first day of work. Suicide. Deep cuts, vertical, right along the vein. Amy had told him, so the sight wasn’t much of a shock, but still—

Simon can show his scars to strangers, because they are the mistakes of the living. It’s what you do when you’re dead that counts.

 

 

 

 

 

Simon gets two lives. The first one kills him.

 

Simon gets two lives. The second makes him a monster.

 

Simon gets two lives. The third—

 

Wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon is a disciple, an acolyte. It’s in his nature. He’ll worship any god that bothers to win him, whether it’s heroin or death or blood or a boy who _just doesn’t want to do any more harm_.

The Undead Prophet promises Simon another chance. He takes it, and he throws his entire self into it, gives it all of his body and mind, because Simon Monroe doesn’t do things by halves. He preaches to choirs of rotting bodies and flesh-hungry souls, he rolls up his sleeves and he does what he wants because there’s nothing to lose. In Roarton, problems present themselves: Kieren Walker will not be won to his god, and Kieren Walker is kissing him like a real second coming, and Kieren Walker is introducing him to his parents, and then Kieren Walker is taking his face in his hands and not speaking just wiping away reaching for his eyes feeling the determination in his own and oh, the Kieren Walker story ends in success but it sure as hell isn’t because of Simon. 

 

Kieren Walker is everything the Prophet promised and never gave, and that night gives Simon a rush he hasn’t had in weeks, something like meth and something like the Prophet's approval. Plenty of men serve two prophets, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes one life has to end before you can start another. This is what Julian tells him, and he knows it in his bones to be true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"You're okay," he whispers, breathless, Kieren lying unconscious beneath him, "You're okay, you're--"

 

 

 

 

"You saved my son," says Steve Walker, looking Simon straight in the eye. There is no trace of the easygoing, almost enviable warmth he remembered from their first meeting; this Steve has eyes that have seen things no living man should have to see, and Simon is struck, suddenly, by the similarity between father and son, the kindness that becomes something harder when pressed. 

 

"I did what I had to do," replies Simon, easy, because it's true, because Kieren's the best addiction he's ever had, because he was raised Catholic and Catholics don't kill their final chance at salvation, and if Steve looks unconvinced that's alright. They've got time.

 


End file.
